BSP chief Mayawati on Sunday said "casteist" and "communal" political parties are having sleepless nights ahead of the urban local body polls in Uttar Pradesh due to her party giving a proper representation to the Muslim community in these elections. "Politics has heated up here due to the BSP giving a proper representation to the Muslim community in the elections for the mayors' posts in 17 municipal corporations. Casteist and communal parties are having sleepless nights due to this," the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said in a tweet in Hindi.
"The BSP is an Ambedkarwadi (Ambedkarite) party that follows the policy and principle of 'sarvajan hitay' and 'sarvajan sukhay' and has formed its government in Uttar Pradesh four times on that basis. It always gave proper representation to Muslims and other communities. Therefore, I appeal to people to pay more attention to their own interests and not to the conspiracies of our rivals," she added.
Of the 17 mayoral seats, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has fielded Muslim candidates on 11, which is being seen as a move to split the Samajwadi Party's (SP) traditional Muslim-Yadav vote bank. The urban local body polls are scheduled to be held on May 4 and May 11 and the counting of votes will be taken up on May 13.
